Stay With Me
by Athena Alexandria
Summary: Post I Do. Juliet takes revenge on Jack for what he did to Ben. Jate.
1. Chapter 1

This was written a really long time ago, before Juliet's motivation was clear, when people were still speculating that Ben was her ex-husband... ;)

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STAY WITH ME

Chapter 1. Stay With Me

When the gunshot pierced the stillness of the beach, Jack thought he was a goner. That was until he turned around to see Kate stagger backwards, eyes wide with confusion, blood blossoming across her shirt. The second bullet found her a little higher, just below the ribcage, and she crumpled to the sand. Jack managed to catch her before she hit the ground.

"You bitch!" he heard Sawyer snarl from somewhere far away, but for now, all of his attention was focused on Kate. He couldn't let her die like Shannon, or Libby, or Ana Lucia, another innocent victim in the survivors' never ending war with The Others. He couldn't let her die because of him.

If only he hadn't tried to be a hero, to save her back at The Others' camp. If only he had followed the Hippocratic oath and done Ben no harm, fixing him like he was supposed to. Then Juliet and the others wouldn't have come after them looking for revenge.

And Kate wouldn't be lying in his arms with a bullet in her chest, and a second in her stomach.

Flashing back to Libby, in the hatch, unable to speak except to murmur her killer's name (if only they'd understood that at the time), he knew what her chances were. Even if they managed to secure passage back to the island where they'd crashed, she'd be dead before they reached the mainland. Judging by the amount of blood staining her clothes, maybe even before that. Still, he had to try. They'd been through too much, together and apart, for him not to at least give her that.

But the fear was overwhelming. He hadn't been this afraid since his first solo procedure, when he'd ripped that girl's dural sac. He'd managed to stay calm when he operated on Sarah, and after they'd crashed, only losing it a little with each of his critical patients: Charlie, Boone, Sawyer (how many times had he saved the southerner's life? Two, maybe three times by now), and of course Libby. But this time was different. This time there was more at stake. If he hadn't known if before, he knew it when he saw her with Sawyer. He loved Kate, maybe more than he'd ever loved anyone in his life. As hard as he tried to resist it (and God knows he had after that kiss, when she'd run from him again, not just physically, but emotionally), he couldn't switch it off. In spite of everything he knew about her, and the other things he feared (the marshal had said she was dangerous, and maybe she was. He still didn't know what she did), he loved her. That was why he needed to fix this, but at the same time, that was why it was so hard.

Taking his own advice, he let the fear in, but only for five seconds. Then he launched into action, refusing to allow himself to consider what would happen if he failed. Pressing his palms to the wounds, he did his best to stem the bleeding. He had to get her out of there, away from Juliet and the rest of The Others before they did any more damage. Once they were safe, he might have a chance.

Jack looked down the beach, and out at the horizon. There, sailing towards them, was Desmond's boat, the Elizabeth. At last, the cavalry had arrived. All he needed now was for Kate to hold on.

She was already drifting in and out of consciousness, her mind wandering from the tense scene in front of them. Catching her eye, he told her to focus on him. "Just stay with me, okay? Sayid and the others are almost here."

"I can't," she whispered. "It hurts."

Her breathing was growing increasingly laboured as she struggled to comply. "I know," he told her, his heart breaking at what he knew was coming. "But you have to stay with me."

Her eyes flickered shut for a moment, then opened, as if she were fighting off sleep.

"I need you to stay awake, okay?" he said, choking on the words as his throat tightened in fear. "If you don't, you might not… I won't be able to… just keep looking at me, okay? Focus on my voice." Tears were welling in his eyes now. He could feel her blood, wet against his palms, cool where it had been warm only moments before. "Just stay with me," he repeated, more as a plea to the heavens this time than as a request to the woman he loved, the woman who now lay dying before him. He wanted to anchor her there, to him, but she was shaking with pain, and so cold all of sudden. He didn't know how much longer she could hold on. He prayed Sayid would get there in time, that today wouldn't end with him standing in the beach cemetery like the Iraqi and Hurley before him, choking on a eulogy for a love cut short. He couldn't bear it.

Kate's eyes grew a little duller, pain clouding her expression, and he knew the next words were hard for her to utter.

"I… love… you."

Her voice was so soft now, so strained, that at first he wasn't sure he'd heard her correctly. Then another thought occurred to him, one that wrenched his heart. "No, you love Sawyer," he argued stubbornly. "I saw you with him, last night."

She shook her head ever so slightly, a tiny smile playing on her pale lips. "Jack…" she breathed, letting him know that she knew full well who she was talking to, who she'd claimed to love. But he never heard her next words, because her eyes closed again, this time, he feared, for good.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2. Not Too Late

Keeping his hands in place over the wounds, Jack leant over, placing his ear lightly against Kate's lips. He held his breath for what seemed like an eternity, waiting for her to exhale, but finally, there it was, the slow, steady rhythm against the side of his face. It was faint, but it was definitely there.

She was still alive somehow, and she loved him.

He felt hope rise up inside him, as fragile as the breath that had inspired it, but hope nonetheless. Maybe it wasn't too late. Maybe they could start over, just like he'd promised her on their third day on the island.

The boat had almost reached them by now. Jack could see Sayid standing on the deck, along with Locke, Desmond, Sun, Jin and Charlie. Sayid and Desmond seemed to be commanding the vessel, while the others stood by, rifles in hand, like soldiers waiting to be deployed. Jack almost smiled at such a show of support from people who'd been strangers only two months before, until he saw that Sawyer now had Juliet's gun, and was aiming it straight for her heart.

"Sawyer, what are you doing?" he asked, his tone wary. Hadn't the whole incident shown him that revenge rarely solved anything? If Juliet hadn't been so intent on taking vengeance out on him, then Kate would still be okay. They didn't have time for this, not when rescue was only seconds away.

Sawyer didn't answer, he just continued to glare at Juliet with that wounded look he got sometimes, the look that usually meant he going to start taunting Jack about Kate. The same look he'd given Jack when they'd tortured him, before he tried to convince him to let him die. The look that meant he wasn't a monster, that somewhere deep down, deeper than he tried to let them see, he had a heart. A heart that was now breaking, along with Jack's own. They'd never agreed on much, except Kate. Though they'd fought for her affection, no matter how she felt, no matter who she inevitably chose, Jack knew that both he and Sawyer would die to prevent her from doing the same. He knew it hurt Sawyer just as much to see her this way, maybe more, since there was nothing the southerner could do. Except this. But Jack couldn't let him kill Juliet. Even if part of him longed to pull the trigger himself.

"We have to go," he said as Sayid anchored the boat and waded out to meet them, but Sawyer wouldn't budge. "Do you want her to die?" he cried, and this time, his words seemed to register with the southerner.

"How is she?" he asked, turning away from Juliet at last. His gun hand faltered and drooped to his side like a wilted flower, his resolve gone.

"She's alive, but she's fading," Jack told him, surprised at how clinical and detached he sounded all of a sudden. It was as if his emotions had gone into overdrive and shut down, leaving only the doctor behind. "We have to get her some place safe so I can operate."

"You really think you can fix her?" Sawyer asked, but for once, his words weren't a challenge issued to goad Jack into a fight. There was fear, admiration, maybe even hope, mixed in with each drawn-out syllable.

"I don't know," Jack said, trying to keep the weight of his despair from crashing over him. If he let it, it would envelop him completely. He wanted to promise to fix her, like he had Sarah, but he knew how well that had turned out. He'd been trying to fix Kate since they day he met her, but he still wasn't sure he could. She was damaged, maybe more so than anyone else he'd ever met, even Sawyer. Maybe that was why he loved her, because Sarah was right, he always needed something to fix, and fixing Kate would take a lifetime, maybe two. Maybe that was why he loved her more now than he ever had before. Or maybe he was just more conscious of it today than yesterday because she was dying. Maybe, maybe, maybe… once he'd had it all figured out, but now, he felt like he didn't know anything anymore.

"What happened?" Sayid asked when he reached Jack's side.

The Others had already begun to retreat. This had only ever been a game to them, and they'd had their fun. Juliet had taken her revenge. There was nothing left for her here, nothing but the same bloody carnage that awaited her back at their camp, the carnage of a war that she and her companions had started but weren't prepared to finish. Today was proof of that.

"She was shot. By The Others." It was the simplest explanation he could give.

"Is there anything you can do?" Sayid's voice was etched with concern, though Jack knew he could leave her if he had to. He was a soldier, after all. The death of a friend was nothing new to him.

"I need something to stop the bleeding."

Sayid pulled a clean shirt from his pack, offering it to Jack, and watching silently as used it to mop up the blood. Seeing how wearied Jack looked, he held out his arms. "Why don't you let me take her?"

Jack shook his head, continuing to press down on the wound as he stepped into the ocean, making his way to the boat. He tried to keep her as a steady as he could, allowing her to be taken from him only once, by Locke, as he climbed onto the boat. Once he was safely on the deck, he reached for her again, laying her down gently in front of him so he could assess the damage.

Yes, he thought in silent answer to Sawyer's question, as the others kept vigil, watching him work. I can fix her. He knew he didn't have a choice.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3. Come What May

By the time they reached their camp at the beach, Jack had managed to find and remove both bullets. The good news was that the wound in Kate's side was more superficial than he'd thought, the bullet lodging itself barely an inch from her side.

The bad news was that the wound in her stomach wasn't. If anything, it was worse than he'd hoped.

Cleaning both wounds, he had repaired the damage as best he as could, stitching her up with the thread Desmond had found him. It was standard black, he noticed, the irony not lost on him. How he longed to go back to that day, the day of the crash, before The Others, before Juliet, before any of this. If he could have his time again, would have waited their captivity out, instead of trying to save Kate, only to face losing her again, right when it seemed that she might return his feelings.

The hatch was gone, to his dismay, so they set up a second infirmary at the caves, where he could keep the wounds sterile much better than he could at the beach. More than a week after Jack had won them fairly in a poker game, Sawyer finally returned his stolen medical supplies, and for once, Jack was glad that the southerner was such a bad sport. Until then, all he'd had to work with was the first aid kit on Desmond's boat, and he'd basically gutted that, using most of the bandages before they'd even reached land.

She had regained consciousness for a few moments on the boat, long enough to look into his eyes with her hazy jade green ones and whisper, "You never give up, do you?" before she drifted off again. That was the last time he heard her voice for three days.

Jack had used most of the painkillers on Sawyer and Boone before Libby had even been brought to him, so he gave Kate some of the heroin instead. It took him a while to figure out the right dosage; he only wanted to lessen her pain, not give her a taste for it, like Charlie, but eventually he was satisfied that it wouldn't do her any further harm.

He sat by her bedside for most of those three days, aware that if it were someone else, he would have sent them away like he had Kate, back when Sawyer had been shot. Sun tried to send him off to sleep a few times, only for him to return less than an hour later with some forgotten instruction she insisted was common sense. By the third day she had given up.

Sawyer hovered beside him for the first day or so, but after a while, the lack of change in her condition started to get to him, and he left, coming by three or four times a day for updates. There was never much to tell, but he kept appearing anyway, staring at Jack with his mouth open as if he wanted to say something before rushing off back to the beach. Jack wasn't sure he wanted to hear whatever it was Sawyer was trying to tell him, not if it somehow related to Kate. He was still trying to erase the grainy image of them wrapped around each other from his memory, though he was beginning to doubt he ever would.

Claire, Charlie, Hurley, and even Locke came by once in a while, but he sent them away, citing sterility and silence as the reasons for their banishment, though he knew neither of those things were likely to make much of a difference this late in the game.

Only Sayid seemed to understand his desperate wish to be alone, keeping his distance once he knew there was nothing he, or any of the others, could do. It was all on Jack now, and Kate's will to survive, and no amount of protest from Sun could make that any less true.

So that left him and Kate. Alone, like lone survivors on a desert island. Somehow it felt right. He knew she'd be angry if she could see him like this, like she was after Boone's funeral when he wouldn't sleep, and when Claire and Charlie disappeared, but he couldn't will himself to leave her. He needed to be there, come what may, even if it was only to close her eyes in death, or to carry her to the beach to join the other casualties. He needed to be there at the end, whatever that was. His father was right, he wasn't good at letting go.

Jack managed to keep the wounds from getting infected, and by the third day, more than thirty-six heart-wrenching hours after she was shot, she was able to find the strength to turn her head, reaching out to touch his shoulder as he drifted into a troubled sleep beside her. He woke with a start, his face cracking into a grin when he saw her watching him. "Hey," he said, unable to keep the emotion from his voice.

"Hey," she replied, her voice shaky from lack of use, but strong, much stronger than he'd had reason to imagine it would be. He'd almost given up hope of ever hearing it again.

"You scared us," he said, only realising this was another denial once the words were out of his mouth. Who was he kidding? "You scared me."

"Sorry," she said sheepishly, melting his heart with another watery grin. What she said next almost stopped it completely.

"About Sawyer, Jack," she began, her voice growing in confidence as she pressed on. "That was a mistake. I was scared and lonely, and I thought he was going to die. Maybe I did love him a little. He's right, we'll always have a connection. But not like you and I do. I'm not in love with him, Jack, I'm in love with you. I never meant to hurt you." Tears glistened in her eyes now, and she turned away again, but he reached over and cupped her chin gently, bringing her back to him. He wasn't going to let her run from this. Not again.

"I'm in love with you too, Kate. I think I have been for a long time," he said, surprising himself with the simplicity of his words, the directness. He'd spent the last three days trying to figure out what he'd say to her when she woke up, and in his more morose moments, what he'd say at her funeral, but somehow this simple phrase had escaped him until now. "I'm sorry it took something like this for me to see it."

And with that, he leant over and kissed her lips lightly, sweeping a sweat-dampened curl out of her eyes. She smiled at him, and he smiled back, musing at how things worked out sometimes. Three days ago he thought he'd lost her, never realising that she'd been his all along. All he'd had to do was find the courage to ask her to stay.


End file.
